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Postia pappi Jaakobille / Letters to Father Jakob

David Mullen ASC

David Mullen ASC

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I just saw this Finnish drama at the Scandinavian Film Festival here in Los Angeles -- really nice widescreen photography. At first I thought it was anamorphic, then I thought it was really clean Super-35 photography, but the end credit mentions someone doing "RED Support". Anyone from Finland know if this was shot on the RED camera? A beautiful movie, very simple.
 
I believe it was, yes. This is in the comments of the youtube trailer, so I wouldn't quote me on this:


"A beautiful film, and RED ONE again showed their hands."

I used Google translate because the comment was in finnish


​
 
If David thought "it was really clean Super-35 photography"... we have accomplished our goals, which was to provide a great digital alternative to film. Now we just need to step it up from here.

Jim
 
I love the look of this film by the way. Would love to see it on a big screen. Beautifully photographed. Anyone want to take a guess at the lenses used on this one?
 
The funny thing was that when the movie started, I kept wondering if the director or cinematographer had seen my own work in "Northfork" because there were some similar inserts -- a steaming tea kettle in a cold wintery light, same goes for tea cups on a tray, etc. Plus a church on a hilltop. All in a similar blue-ish 2.35 frame. But I'm probably just deluding myself... these are rather iconic images after all.

Knowing nothing about the movie going in, unlike every other RED movie I've seen, by the time it was finished, I still was wondering what format it was shot in. Most of the movie is daytime, interior and exterior, probably lit with HMI's and Kinos, plus natural light. Some warm tungsten lighting probably for sunset interiors. The few night interiors were slightly muddier but I figured they had just switched to a faster film stock, but now I realize they were shooting in tungsten balance. The cold look of the movie was what threw me, I figured that it would be hard to time a Red movie on the blue side without picking up more noise, but this movie was very clean-looking. The highlights sometimes were a bit "hot" so I suspect that the movie was exposed conservatively in general except for a few shots. Anyway, it looked quite good.
 
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This movie was broadcasted at finnish national tv last week and I hadn't seen it before. Probably the best movie I have watched in long time. Since it was broadcasted in standard definition I didn't pay that much attention to the technical quality of the image. I thought it was filmed on 35mm film like the director's previous movie Äideistä parhain / Mother of Mine (which also was selected as Finland's contender for the Oscar for the best international film).

The movie budget's here are small, three million dollars is considered big. I guess every way they can save money really counts so I think Red One is quite popular here. 19 theatrically released movies last year, at least 6 of those were shot digitally from which at least 3 was shot on Red One (and one even with Canon HV20 with a budget of 10000 euros). Quite many of the movies were probably also shot on 16mm film.

A. Järvinen
 
Wow, I must check this one out. I'm planning on shooting my next movie on RED1 and it has a similar coloscheme and the same widescreen image as this one.

Heh, A. Järvinen I suppose you're talking about "What become of us", when you're mentioning a movie shot with Canon HV20 on 10000 Euro budget? I met those guys in Hamburg and they were pretty cool, I liked the movie, it was a bit too "mainstream" for a pretentious bloke like me, but it had a lot of heart, which in the end, is what matters.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
I just saw this Finnish drama at the Scandinavian Film Festival here in Los Angeles -- really nice widescreen photography. At first I thought it was anamorphic, then I thought it was really clean Super-35 photography, but the end credit mentions someone doing "RED Support". Anyone from Finland know if this was shot on the RED camera? A beautiful movie, very simple.
Click to expand...

Yes, it's indeed a very nice movie put up together from rather simple elements. And yes, I also recall reading somewhere that it was shot using Red One. The movie has got very good reviews. It was shown recently on Finnish TV and have to say it looked very good.

Edit: Here's a link confirming it's shot with Red One: http://www.generator.fi/?p=343#more-343
 
Jannard said:
If David thought "it was really clean Super-35 photography"... we have accomplished our goals, which was to provide a great digital alternative to film. Now we just need to step it up from here.

Jim
Click to expand...

You must be so proud. That's high praise indeed!
 
Yes, David, the film was shot on RED ONE with Cooke S-4 lenses.

We did the grading in Lustre suite, the shoot-out on Kodak 5201 camera negative with a Celco Fury recorder and then the prints on Fuji XD print stock.

The lighting was HMI´s, KinoFlos and natural light - as you assumed. (Plus some tungsten when the lights are turned on in the night scene).

It was originally planned for TV release only and shot in 15 days. Eventually it also ended up in cinema release and is now touring around on different festivals.

I am happy you liked the film! We didn´t discuss Northfolk when prepping ;) - but rather Being There by Hal Ashby.

Tuomo Hutri, FSC
DP
"Letters to Father Jacob"
 
Thank you!

Yes, it only exists in 2,40:1 ratio - for TV and cinema.

We were fighting for it (to make 2,40:1 even if shooting for TV) with the director, because we thought we could make better compositions and use the space in a more interesting way. I am happy we got a green light for that after all!
 
Beautifully done.

As far as exposing goes- what was your methodology? Did you rate / expose / meter at 320? Did you use false color? Did you prefer ETTR or ETTL?

In regards to grading- what system did you use to grade the final edit?
 
David Mullen ASC said:
My wife has been learning Finnish for fun and reads Helsingin Sanomat online for practice. She's also the reason I went to the Scandinavian Film Festival last weekend.
Click to expand...

Maybe you should bring your wife for a language course over here and come and share your camera wisdom with the finnish peers? Summertime is really nice here and there is a beautiful light in the night time...
 
Ryan E. Walters said:
Beautifully done.

As far as exposing goes- what was your methodology? Did you rate / expose / meter at 320? Did you use false color? Did you prefer ETTR or ETTL?

In regards to grading- what system did you use to grade the final edit?
Click to expand...

My method was to shoot an exposure test before the shoot and look at that with the colorist. Then in the shoot I tried to get a full exposure to the hightlight and see in the monitor how much fill light felt appropriate. My rating was 250 ASA.

The grading was done in a Lustre suite in a company called Generator Post (Finlnad) with a really good guy called Timo Luomanen. We worked quite hard to get the skin tones right.
 
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